“Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or
not?”
“It is certainly a woman.”
“Which room did you hear it from?”
“From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell.”
“But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the doors as
I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just as
plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman——”
“Why, what else _could_ it be?”
He looked at me hard.
“There are more things in heaven and earth,” said he. “If it is a woman,
how does she get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, nor I. But if it is the other thing—but there, for a practical
business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a
ridiculous line of conversation.” He turned away, but I saw that he felt
even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe Place
a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by this time have
taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to me, it
never reached the others.
And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night
from neuralgia, and about mid-day I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne
to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the indexing of Sir
John Bollamore’s library, and it was my custom to work there from five
till seven. On this particular day I struggled against the double effect
of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already mentioned that there
was a recess in the library, and in this it was my habit to work. I
settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and,
falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep.
How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke.
Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a
semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with
books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight came
through the farther window, and against this lighter background I saw
that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His well-set
head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the
glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the
sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a
dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood
in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something
squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I never
realized—it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain that I was
intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be alone in the
room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions, and I
had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp,
metallic clicking, and then the voice.
Yes, it was a woman’s voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a
voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will ring
for ever in my ears. It came with a curious far-away tinkle, but every
word was clear, though faint—very faint, for they were the last words of
a dying woman.
“I am not really gone, John,” said the thin, gasping voice. “I am here
at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy to
think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be
strong, be strong, until we meet again.”
I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could not
do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying, half
sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning distant
musical words. And he—he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken he
might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my half
articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room,
switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his
eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless
charwoman may have seen him weeks before.
“Mr. Colmore!” he cried. “You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?”
With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my
luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger
faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over
his features.
“My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore,” said he. “I have only myself to blame
for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no
confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story
may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely
upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your
lips. I am proud still—God help me!—or, at least, I am proud enough to
resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled at
envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate.
“You have heard the source from which the voice comes—that voice which
has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am
aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations,
whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and
forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and
eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that, Mr.
Colmore, I acquit you.
“When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I was
launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse which
brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my side. I
drank deeply of the wine of life—if there is a man living who has drank
more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered, my character
suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a necessity to me,
I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it was at that time,
the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent into my life the
gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a ministering angel
from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me, and spent her life
in making a man once more of that which had degraded itself to the level
of the beasts.
“But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes. In
the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings and
her own death that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang which her
fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was removed I
should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that I made oath
to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She knew only too
well the hold that the devil had upon me—she who had striven so to
loosen it—and it haunted her night and day the thought that my soul
might again be within his grip.
“It was from some friend’s gossip of the sick room that she heard of
this invention—this phonograph—and with the quick insight of a loving
woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London
to procure the best which money could buy. With her dying breath she
gasped into it the words which have held me straight ever since. Lonely
and broken, what else have I in all the world to uphold me? But it is
enough. Please God, I shall face her without shame when He is pleased to
reunite us! That is my secret, Mr. Colmore, and whilst I live I leave it
in your keeping.”